In the virtual worlds of climate modeling, forests and other vegetation are assumed to bounce back quickly from extreme drought. But that assumption is far off the mark, according to a new study of drought impacts at forest sites worldwide. Living trees took an average of two to four years to recover and resume normal growth rates after droughts ended, researchers report today in the journal Science.

California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in April , mandating urban centers to reduce water usage by 25 percent.
His announcement came after Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, sounded the alarm that California water reservoirs and groundwater supplies are dramatically contracting . The state has only one year left of Mother Nature's ancient aquifers if climate change continues and the state doesn't curb usage.
Since Brown's announcement, the situation has worsened. Mountaintops in California barely received a touch of snow in the spring, and rainfall hasn't yet made up for the last few years of below normal precipitation .
California is four years into an intense drought, and scientists have calculated that this year will be the driest in more than four centuries. A record number of fires have burned across the state after brief rains produced sprigs of greenery that quickly dried up, becoming starter fuel. Cal Fire reported that it ...

The wettest rainforest in the continental United States had gone up in flames and the smoke was so thick, so blanketing, that you could see it miles away. Deep in Washington's Olympic National Park, the aptly named Paradise Fire, undaunted by the dampness of it all, was eating the forest alive and destroying an ecological Eden. In this season of drought across the West, there have been far bigger blazes but none quite so symbolic or offering quite such grim news. It isn't the size of the fire (though it is the largest in the park's history), nor its intensity. It's something else entirely - the fact that it shouldn't have been burning at all. When fire can eat a rainforest in a relatively cool climate, you know the Earth is beginning to burn.
And here's the thing: the Olympic Peninsula is my home. Its destruction is my personal nightmare and I couldn't stay away.
Smoke Gets in My Eyes
"What a bummer! Can't even see Mount Olympus," a disappointed tourist exclaimed from the Hurricane Ridge visitor center. ...

Paradise Burning
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
The wettest rainforest in the continental United States had gone up in flames and the smoke was so thick, so blanketing, that you could see it miles away. Deep in Washington’s Olympic National Park, the aptly named Paradise Fire, undaunted by the dampness of it all, was eating the forest alive and destroying an ecological Eden. In this season of drought across the West, there have been far bigger blazes but none quite so symbolic or offering quite such grim news. It isn’t the size of the fire (though it is the largest in the park’s history), nor its intensity. It’s something else entirely -- the fact that it shouldn’t have been burning at all. When fire can eat a rainforest in a relatively cool climate, you know the Earth is beginning to burn.
And here’s the thing: the Olympic Peninsula is my home. Its destruction is my personal nightmare and I couldn’t stay away.
Smoke Gets in My Eyes
“What a bummer! Can’t even see Mount Olympus,” a disappointed tourist ...

Image: Ellmax Photos
It's December 2031, and my hand is tingling with an alert from Apple's latest wearable technology. I've received a new e-mail: The Daily Catch has landed in my inbox with global news on all things related to water. I have two options: I can watch a hologram, or I can go old-school and read the articles.
"One Tuna Sold for $20 Million to Japanese Billionaire," read one headline.
I remember thinking it was crazy when one tuna sold in 2013 for $1.7 million.
"Record Snowfall in Boston," read another.
No kidding. I look out my window -- it's blocked by 13 feet of snow. The city is paralyzed. It was really bad when we had eight feet back in 2015.
"Quiz -- Climate Change..."
I stop reading, close my eyes, and feel the unease wash over me.
All you hear about is water scarcity, water wars, failing crops, record heat, cold, snow, and flooding. Were the ocean and its problems at the root of the climate change problem? I cast my mind back to when I became interested in all things ...

Steve Yuhas, a resident of wealthy California enclave Rancho Santa Fe, has become famous for his reaction to drought-imposed water restrictions. His post reads:
"(People) should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful."
In a follow-on interview with the Washington Post, he added,
"We pay significant property taxes based on where we live. And, no, we're not all equal when it comes to water."
Clearly, public shaming is not going to work on this guy.
And we've all heard about Tom Selleck allegedly stealing water by the tanker load from a fire hydrant. Selleck argues it was only illegally diverted, not stolen, but he's still breaking the law to keep his ranch going.
On the other end of the economic spectrum are agricultural workers in San Joaquin Valley, trying to survive on water that has arsenic levels double the level considered safe. Even bathing can result in poisoning. Impoverished residents are buying bottled ...

Four independent global data sets registered 2014 as the warmest year on record, the Weather Channel reported, citing an annual review by international scientists sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The only major region of the world with below-average annual temperatures was Eastern North America .
The review compiled by NOAA's Center for Weather and Climate and based on contributions of more than 400 scientists found that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a global average of 397.2 parts per million, a 1.9-ppm-increase in 2014; the global average was 354 ppm in 1990, the review's first year.
Other highlights of the State of the Climate in 2014 report include
Record highs for sea surface temperatures, particularly in the North Pacific Ocean, as well as for global upper ocean heat (oceans absorb more than 90 percent of Earth's excess heat), and global sea levels (oceans expand as they suck up ...

When it comes to addressing climate change, the need to act has never been more urgent or more important. Not only was 2014 the hottest year on record, much of the country also experienced the devastating impacts of extreme weather. From a dangerous algae bloom in Toledo, Ohio that prevented nearly half a million people from drinking their own water to the dramatic droughts in California, climate change is upon us faster and in a more severe manner than scientists had predicted.
Pope Francis has joined the scientific community recently in sounding the alarm on climate change and elevating this critical conversation. His encyclical made clear that addressing climate change is not only about the sustainability of the planet; it is also a test of our moral grounding.
Will we leave the earth in better or worse condition than we inherited it? Will we do right by future generations?
The good news is that while the threat of climate change has never been greater, neither have the solutions. Here in the U.S. ...

In the last seven years, an estimated one person every second has been forced to flee their home by a natural disaster, with 19.3 million people forced to flee their homes in 2014 alone, according to a new report. The research suggests disaster displacement is on the rise, and as policy leaders worldwide advance towards the adoption of a post-2015 global agenda, the time has never been better to address it.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Tuesday urged a group of 60 mayors to take action in their cities on climate change, warning that global warming is "the biggest threat of our time" and denouncing skeptics as "troglodytes."
At a climate change conference hosted by Pope Francis at the Vatican and attended by U.S. mayors and global leaders, Brown offered a dire assessment of climate change's potential effects in the near future.
"We don’t even know how far we've gone, or if we've gone over the edge,” Brown said . "This is not some linear set of problems that we can predict. We have to take measures against an uncertain future which may well be something no one ever wants. We are talking about extinction. We are talking about climate regimes that have not been seen for tens of millions of years. We're not there yet, but we're on our way."
Brown criticized politicians and business leaders who are skeptical of global warming and its effects as "troglodytes" who have a vested interest in "bamboozling" the ...

WASHINGTON -- Republicans are outraged that Democratic presidential contender Martin O'Malley cited actual scientific research in comments about how climate change has contributed to internal conflicts in Syria.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday , O'Malley discussed the national security implications of climate change. "One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation state of Syria and the rise of ISIS, was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that nation, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis that created the symptoms -- or rather, the conditions -- of extreme poverty that has now led to the rise of ISIS and this extreme violence," he said.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called O'Malley's comments "absurd."
"Whether it's the weak Obama-Clinton nuclear deal that paves the way for Iran to obtain an atomic bomb or Martin O'Malley's absurd claim that climate change is responsible for ISIS, it’s abundantly ...

July 18, 2015
Last weekend, about 100 U.S. Veterans for Peace gathered in Red Wing, Minnesota, for a statewide annual meeting. In my experience, Veterans for Peace chapters hold "no-nonsense" events. Whether coming together for local, statewide, regional or national work, the Veterans project a strong sense of purpose. They want to dismantle war economies and work to end all wars. The Minnesotans, many of them old friends, convened in the spacious loft of a rural barn. After organizers extended friendly welcomes, participants settled in to tackle this year's theme: "The War on Our Climate."
They invited Dr. James Hansen , an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute, to speak via Skype about minimizing the impacts of climate change. Sometimes called the "father of global warming", Dr. Hansen has sounded alarms for several decades with accurate predictions about the effects of fossil fuel emissions. He now campaigns for an economically efficient phase out of fossil fuel emissions by ...

Hawai‘i, the name alone elicits images of rhythmic traditional dancing, breathtaking azure sea coasts and scenes of vibrant birds flitting through lush jungle canopy. Unfortunately, the future of many native Hawaiian birds looks grim as diseases carried by mosquitoes are due to expand into higher elevation safe zones.A new study published in Global Change Biology, by researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, assesses how global climate change will affect future malaria risk to native Hawaiian bird populations in the coming century.

Well there you go again you wacky scientists spinning their wild tales of impending disaster and doom all to advance their ultra-liberal social agenda which includes abolition of capitalism as we know it, forcing people to actually interact with one another by living close to one another, and instituting mass transportation regimes which once again force people to interact with one another, oh the humanity, the horror! Damn you who conspire to destroy this happy little piece of Paradise that we have worked so hard to secure for ourselves. Don't worry about the climate, weather changes all the time, we will be just fine.
Denial in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary is either devious or insane. It is simply unfathomable for many people with no intellectual investment in or appreciation for science to be compelled to entertain even the slightest notions that neither God nor nature nor human-driven technological inventions are appropriate strategies for saving us from ourselves. Oh ye of ...

Last weekend, about 100 U.S. Veterans for Peace gathered in Red Wing, Minnesota, for a statewide annual meeting. In my experience, Veterans for Peace chapters hold “no-nonsense” events. Whether coming together for local, statewide, regional or national work, the Veterans project a strong sense of purpose. They want to dismantle war economies and work to end all wars. The Minnesotans, many of them old friends, convened in the spacious loft of a rural barn. After organizers extended friendly welcomes, participants settled in to tackle this year’s theme: “ The War on Our Climate .”
They invited Dr. James Hansen , an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, to speak via Skype about minimizing the impacts of climate change. Sometimes called the “father of global warming”, Dr. Hansen has sounded alarms for several decades with accurate predictions about the effects of fossil fuel emissions. He now campaigns for an economically efficient phase out of fossil fuel emissions by imposing carbon ...